Fictional
by OnTheImportanceOfLungs
Summary: Jaune Arc was a student at Beacon University the day the world ended. Someone had named them the Grimm because they looked like things from fairytales. In this world, only two things were clear - the Grimm were infinite and the time of man was coming to an end.
1. Chapter 1

It was February in Vale, so naturally I was freezing my ass off. I walked directly down the center of the street to take advantage of the right of way granted to students on a college campus. There were patches of black ice on the sidewalk to be avoided and a thick hoarfrost covered the bare branches. Once in awhile, a particularly aggressive wind would layer everyone on the road with little needles of ice.

For once, I was glad that I still had an iPhone - those old sturdy things that hadn't been in season for nearly two years now. Scrolls were a nightmare to use in inclement weather. I played with it mindlessly, opening app after app that I didn't feel like using. It was something to do, something to stave off the nervous energy that comes before an exam. I sipped a cup of coffee I'd acquired from the campus bookstore on the trek over from the dorms.

My phone tinkled in that uncomfortable sound that was like glass breaking, without any breaking involved, if you know what I mean.

I'm not the most articulated kind of guy, alright.

I pointedly ignored the snapchat from my roommate. It was definitely a picture of a pair of tits, probably the ones of the girl I'd been sexiled over last night - kicked out of my room without a single consideration for my sleep. It was for that reason I desperately needed this cup of coffee. Cardin was on my shitlist right now, even though I wouldn't ever find the courage to say it to his face, for doing the nasty on the night before my first chem exam for the semester.

And probably because I'd never seen a pair of live tits before.

I wallowed in misery for a few precious moments as I swerved away from a particularly large and slippery-looking patch of ice, but I found it within me to move onto righteous anger.

"But it's Thirsty Thursday," I mocked into my phone, in a nasally imitation of Cardin's voice, drawing out every syllable in the most petulant whine I could manage.

"No it's not." A ball of blonde hair attached to an enormous winter parka attempted to run me over.

I tilted out of the way mostly out of self-preservation.

The parka drew me into a one-armed bear hug that nearly knocked me over.

"God damn it, Yang!" I shouted, pointing the coffee away from myself as at least half of the steaming liquid splashed onto the asphalt.

Yang Xiao-Long was my best friend at Beacon and everyone's favorite girl next door stereotype. She called out the plays with the casters during the Superbowl and threw nachos at the TV screen when her team had unlucky fumbles. She broke upperclassman hearts and made out with other chicks under the barlights. She even had a loser friend who she drank under the table the first time they met.

"Vooooooooomit-boy!" Yang screeched my least favorite nickname into the morning dew, drawing the attention of all the sleep deprived students around us.

"Yang!" I protested, definitely with manly anger rather than a pout I was unable to keep off my face.

She grinned cheekily and then snatched my hard-earned coffee, bought with the hard-earned money from my part-time job driving the campus shuttle and made off in a dead run towards the Chemistry building. I stared off into Yang's direction out in the distance, triangulated between dazed, confused and dismayed. This was war.

"Hey, Jaune," said Pyrrha Nikos, who had sidled up next to me, somehow. She pressed her own cup of steaming liquid into my freezing fingers. "Don't worry about it. I've got extra," she said in a cultured, city voice with just the trace of a Greek accent.

I loved Pyrrha Nikos. But totally not in that weird, creepy way that friends-with-the-best-girl relationships usually turn out. Pyrrha was like me, except she was two inches taller and twice as awesome. She was a loner who was barely acknowledged by anyone but unlike me, she didn't beg for anyone's attention. She pulled straight As in all her classes like I did, but, somehow, her As were even straighter. And she was from New York City, like me, but unlike me, she was from Manhattan and not Westchester.

Also, she probably used to be a medal winning Olympian or something, because what looked like a cartoon version of her was on my morning cereal. I was always too polite to ask for sure. Telling someone that their marshmallow dopplegangers were delicious would probably be pretty awkward, even for me.

"Thanks, Pyrrha," I said, flashing her my patented panty-dropping smile. It's never worked before but I figured there was really no harm in trying.

She smiled back, always too polite to acknowledge my attempts at being suave and walked with me into the building and into the lecture hall. I took several polite sips and handed the coffee back to her. She took her coffee without sugar or milk.

But I remember that day, the day of my chem exam not because I'd been sexiled by Cardin Winchester, not because Yang had nearly bowled me over and stolen my coffee, not even because Pyrrha Nikos proved again that she was the nicest girl I'd ever met.

I remember that day because it was the day the world ended.

When I strolled into the lecture hall, I was struck by a scene of profound loss.

Yang was gently cradling my cup of coffee in her palms as she indulged, directly over the trash can at the back of the room.

When she took one look at me, her lips split into a triumphant grin and she sighed with a hearty melodrama, then took a deep drink. Her fingers stretched open and the cup fell through the air like the swing of a guillotine. The grin widened.

"Son of a bitch," I whispered, incensed.

I pointedly turned my attention away from her and stomped down the center aisle of the hall, taking a seat near the front of the room, as far from Cardin as possible. I usually let my less academically inclined roommate cheat off my paper during most of our tests. This time, however, I saw that he was already camped out at the back and he sadly wouldn't be able to walk over and sit next to me without causing a scene. What a shame.

Yang, however, was under no such compunctions. She grabbed everything from textbooks to notebooks that she'd splayed out over the seat she'd taken, stuffed it into a knapsack, and then hit the poor girl who had chosen the wrong row with the sleeves of her parka as she tore it off the back of her chair. Yang sailed down the steps of the lecture hall and into the seat directly next to me.

"Jaune, my favorite barista!"

I groaned.

Professor Port narrowed his eyes at her and I could tell he was holding back a sigh, but he didn't comment. He was far too used to Yang fouling up his classroom with her... Yangness to care.

What mattered was that Port knew Yang was super smart and didn't need to cheat. It was more than likely that whoever was sitting behind us was going to have a fantastic grade between looking at my neat calculations and Yang's multiple choice answers.

I was way too proud to rely on someone else's work and, to be honest, most of the problems on the chem exam were short-answer. Cheating on it was obvious and the easiest way to fail. Say what you will about the blustering, boisterous lecturer, Professor Port diligently checked every single calculation and followed every student's thought process by hand to the end - with the intention of doling out as much credit as he physically could.

I turned around to see if I recognized the lucky benefactor of having a seat behind Jaune Arc and Yang Xiao-Long power couple (except not in that way) during an exam.

The frosty glare of the most beautiful girl in all of Beacon and my future girlfriend, one Weiss Schnee, pinned me down.

Okay. She probably wouldn't really benefit from the current seating arrangements either. Yang's little sister, Ruby, was somehow her best friend (or at least the only person Weiss spoke to when she was sober) and the girl swore that Weiss's GPA was four.

Not three-nine-five. Not three-nine-seven. Not even three-nine-nine. Four-oh.

Weiss rolled her eyes at me as my face reddened. I was still staring. Damn it, Jaune!

"Welcome to your first exam of the semester in Chem 101," Professor Port boomed as the clock hit ten am. A few stragglers were still making their way in, short on breath and shorter on sleep.

"102!" someone shouted from the back of the room. It was probably that idiot who hung out with Cardin that Yang punched in the face by accident once.

Never one to be bothered by rowdiness, the professor began again. "Welcome to your first exam of the semester in Chem 102," Port amended, smiling jovially.

It was colder than usual in the room, almost unnaturally so. Even Yang, who could be confused for a space heater sometimes, was shivering. When her teeth chattered for a third time, she gave up and pulled the winter parka over her shoulders as the TA handed me the armful of chem exams over the edge of the steps. I dutifully took one, left it facedown on the table and slid the pile down to Yang.

She took a copy of her own and tossed the stack of tests several feet down the table into some guy's waiting fingers. I could almost feel Weiss, who'd actually pushed her chair in when she got up to pass the test down (and also thanked the girl to her left for receiving the stack) rolling her eyes again.

I tried to hold out on putting on my jacket like a real man but the cold was becoming unbearable. I could hear phrases like "cold as fuck" and "did the heating break?" behind me. I whipped my head around. Weiss looked perfectly at home in her bolero jacket. She tucked her platinum blonde ponytail behind her right shoulder and worried the cap of her pen, waiting for Professor Port to give the signal to start. Unlike everyone else, she looked perfectly at home in the cold. Ever the snow angel.

I noticed it fifteen seconds after the exam had begun.

There was a curious kind of mist forming at the lowest level of the lecture hall. Professor Port, behind his demonstration table, was undoubtedly standing in it. The mist had the consistency of a warm breath in the early morning but also a tinge of unnatural color.

"Mr. Arc?" Professor Port said quietly, now directly in front of me. "Are you going to get started on your exam?"

I nodded mutely with a frown, choosing not to draw attention to the mist. The heating systems were probably broken or some hungover grad student had spilled a ton of dry ice into the vents.

I worked through the problems about molecular chirality with practiced ease. It appeared that Yang was a little less sure on the questions but they had been the first thing I had studied when Cardin was bonking the chick in our room last night. I positioned my left and right hands in the directions of the molecules and quickly filled in the diagram.

Yang must have seen my hands because she was suddenly inspired by the little memory device I used and she began filling out the test with gusto.

I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye which I hoped wasn't Professor Port coming over to fail me. I looked up quickly into a corner of the lecture hall but there was nothing there. I frowned.

The shadow was gone but it had attracted my attention to the suddenly thick mist that had built up on the ground. My frown deepened. I whipped my head around quickly.

Weiss had stopped filling out her exam as well. She may have been a certifiable genius but there was no way she was already done, not after ten minutes. She, too, was staring with some alarm at the thick mist forming on the ground. At the present consistency, I could see that the mist was tinged slightly blue-gray.

It now started to attract the attention of the other test takers.

"What the fuck?" someone finally asked, breaking the silence. Professor Port, being the sensible chemist he was, held his breath, leaned over and tucked in his slacks into his boots.

"Turn around, Jaune," Yang said.

No, that wasn't Yang's voice. It was on my right, not my left. I spun around, tracking the sound.

There was no one to be seen. Nobody was seated on that side of the lecture hall, after all. I felt a stab of confusion tinged with some worry for my sanity.

The mist continued to grow in volume and thickness until it began to shroud the backpack I'd placed on the ground.

"What the hell is going on?" Yang asked, leaping to her feet, her brilliant violet eyes alight with a sort of sensible fear for the unknown gaseous compound loose in a chemistry building.

A gas leak, it had to be. Something that combined with spilled chemicals to produce a thick, vaguely tinted mist.

Her reaction spurred everyone to their feet. There was a cacophony of jackets being zipped and crinkling paper - of writing utensils bouncing on the ground and chairs being pushed in as everyone hurriedly grabbed at their belongings.

It was so cold.

Cardin was the first to the door. He'd shoved the slow-packing Russell out of the way as the other boy put all his pens back into a pencil case with a strange kind of OCD.

Cardin placed his hands against the knobs of the double doors and threw them wide open.

"He shouldn't have done that," said the voice that wasn't Yang with a dark chuckle.

It appeared that there was more mist outside because it rushed into the room now.

Cardin put on his bravest face and took a step out.

He screamed.

It was a pitiful, scary sound that froze everyone in place. Yang and I were still the foolishly bravest, packing our things methodically at the bottom of the lecture hall and now we looked up.

There was a dark shape and a spray of red.

A choked gasp from Yang. Yang, the boxer. Yang, who loved a good fight. Yang, who had reactions a bit faster than the rest of us. But this was no bout in the ring.

"Oh my, what great big teeth you have," said the voice, a positively slutty contralto.

Cardin fell to the ground.

His throat had been torn out.

"Beowolf," the voice identified with bubbly relish. "It's a Beowolf. They come in packs."

It filled the doorway now like a monster from a fairy tale. It was neither wolf nor man. It stood just a bit taller than Cardin had in life. It slouched on its hind legs like coiled springs and had deep, pitch-midnight fur that stood out against the blue-gray mist rising from the ground and billowing in from behind it. Long, bone-white protrusions lined its joints.

But the most prominent feature was the mask of bone and blood that hid its horrendous face from view. It was covered in that fine red mist that had been Cardin's life, that had been Cardin's hopes and dreams and fears and everything.

I echoed Yang's gasp, retching. I could feel tears pooling in the corners of my eyes, a product of a shock that I'd never experienced before, as it surveyed us, judging us.

It threw back its head and howled.

In response, my friends and my peers, my rivals and my teenage crushes screamed and cried. There was a flurry of movement and madness as some backed away slowly and others turned and ran - towards the beacon of authority and maturity, the white-faced Professor Port, still behind his desk. He tried to put on a resolute face but his fingers found their way to his mustache and I could tell that he was on the verge of screaming as well.

But he thought of the students and grit his teeth instead.

As the class made a mad dash or a slow retreat, dependent on personality in these most trying of times, down the aisles and behind Professor Port's desk, neither Yang who stood beside me, or Weiss, who stood between me and the beast moved.

And I found my chivalry. I was rooted in place by that misguided desire to be brave.

The class filed around Professor Port in a tight pack as Weiss, who was calm and collected despite what happened, stared it down almost placidly, our very own hero from legend. She had a hint of distress on her face, but there was a madness there and an anger - as though she was miffed that she had been interrupted during her exam. The Beowolf, still framed by the door, locked eyes with her.

Yang and I stood together with an air of sure nonchalance strengthened by one another, but the iron grip she held on my forearm and my dripping tears told another story.

Even in the cold, I could feel the sweat slicking her palm through my sleeve.

The Beowolf howled again and stared at the cold white fairy of a girl who dared to defy it and tore through the air in a sudden motion.

Weiss threw her hands up to her face in instinct and shrunk back but the force of the Beowolf and its almost-humanoid arms sliced through the air and flung her like a ragdoll past us and into an unused blackboard at the side of the room. It could have come close to breaking the sound barrier, it moved so fast to my eyes that I couldn't have known for sure.

Weiss collapsed to the ground in a heap, tears of pain and disbelief running down her face, but she didn't cry out. A bloody line ran down her face and over her eye where the Beowolf had scored her with one of those boney protrusions. Her lips moved wordlessly as she stared at the Beowolf with wide, unblinking baby blue eyes. Her long, thin fingers found their way to a small golden crucifix hanging from her neck and she clung on for dear life.

The screaming started again but I couldn't hear it because the voice had taken my ears once more.

"It wants Yang," she said, still lighthearted despite the circumstances. The Beowolf raised its sinewy arms.

I reacted immediately, pulling Yang by the collar with a strength I didn't know I had - and half-shoved her over the table at our backs as the clawed hand came down.

Not a moment too soon.

There was a horrible crunch of wood like the sound of death itself as the Beowolf splintered Yang's chair and gouged the table. Little bits of corkboard and plywood seating cascaded over me, cutting into my skin and I blinked sharply.

The screaming continued but I couldn't focus on anything but that voice.

"Duck." There was a sense of urgency in my bones.

I did.

There was a glancing blow over the back of my head which drove my spine against the table painfully. I gasped in pain. My left arm was numb from the awkward angle it had hit my chair, which I'd knocked askew.

"Find open ground," the voice said, mirroring my urgency. "Duck!" she repeated suddenly.

Words from my childhood swam to the forefront of my mind. In case of a fire, stop, drop and roll.

I skipped the stopping bit and immediately dropped to my knees and rolled into the center aisle. The strength at which the Beowolf brought down its arms this time split the table in half and ruined my chemistry exam beyond all repair.

The Beowolf turned to face me and didn't howl this time - no. It opened a distended jaw full of sharp, white fangs and roared at me, a totally inhuman sound. I could smell decay on its breath, a wretched odor of malice and rot.

I heard the voice again but it was entirely unintelligible. The Beowolf had been toying with me to begin with. It moved again, faster than I could react, faster than I could hear, faster than I could even think and grasped at me. Its claws dug into my chest as it picked me up by the shoulder and threw me across the room, over an entire line of lecture seats and into the far wall.

I could hear the pop of my shoulder, dislocated from its socket. Surprisingly, I felt no pain, not yet. It would come soon if I survived.

But as I collapsed to the ground in a deep groan and looked over at Weiss, who I shared a sick sense of camaraderie with now, I could see that the Beowolf was more interested in me than the rest of the students.

It advanced on me now and the more level-headed of my classmates slowly crept their way to the opposite side of the room and up the steps towards the outside, towards the bright mist. Towards more Beowolves.

My doom advanced on me slowly, savoring the hunt.

"You're going to die."

She was so sure and sultry. There was a cattiness to her voice and she'd found that resonant contralto again in her lilt. She was right and she'd be the last I'd hear in this cruel world.

The words tumbled out of my cracked lips in a whisper. "I don't want to."

A muted chuckle. "Are you sure?"

I nodded, staring up at the advancing Beowolf, who drank in my fear like an elixir.

"Dying's not that bad," the voice promised, with a deep reassurance. I think I believed her.

The Beowolf took another step, throwing the chairs in the aisle out of the way like they weighed nothing.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality."

Was this some sort of prayer she was saying for me?

"Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory."

Already some students had escaped the room. Was I to be a sacrifice? A paragon of virtue, indeed.

"To rise above all," she said in a whisper, sure as any minister.

There was a strange feeling at the pit of my stomach, like I felt when I spoke to Pyrrha for the first time or when Ruby smiled at me while we played Smash and ganged up on Yang's Fox.

"Infinite in distance and unbound by death."

It took a turn for the worse and I felt more negative emotions. Consternation, like when Yang snatched my coffee. Fear and self-loathing and regret, when Cardin fell with a thunk.

"I release your soul…"

And now, admiration for Weiss as she stared death down. For Yang, who refused to move. And even a bit of pride in myself, for saving my best friend.

"And by my shoulder, protect thee."

Fire. Fire in my veins that drove away the cold. The lights seemed brighter, the world seemed more real. The mist was nothing to me. The Beowolf was nothing but a dark dream.

I ducked, instinctively this time. The claw smashed a hole into the wall where my head was.

I felt something indescribable fill me - Invincible was I, confidence was me, victory I would become.

In that moment, Jaune Arc, the nerdy loner who was far too concerned about the little things in life died. And I was born.

"Don't duck this time," she said, with that terrible decadence.


	2. Chapter 2

The Beowolf regarded me with red eyes. There was a malicious intellect behind them which sized me up differently now. Maybe it had felt the change in my demeanor as much as I had. Maybe the strength coursing through me was as palpable to everyone else as it was to me.

Or maybe I was crazy and it was considering the fastest way to take me down to hell. But as quickly as it came, the sober thought evaporated because I could hear her voice again.

"Grimm Studies, Unit One," said my invisible savior. "Lesson one."

We stared each other down - the beast and I. I tried to reconcile the soothing voice with the adrenaline building in the pit of my stomach.

"The Beowolf."

The screams had stopped. I felt the uncomfortable sensation of eyes on me. I had thought the worst feeling in the world was when I drew attention through some sort of embarrassment, but I was wrong. The hope and trepidation that filled the faces were much more damning. I don't think I was a victim to them anymore.

In another life, I would have cut quite an image as a matador. I could see Pyrrha in the crowd, clutching at her tote until her fingers turned white and bloodless. There was nothing but worry in those sea-green eyes.

"Observe the Beowolf in its natural habitat, feasting upon the fears of mankind."

The beast howled again.

"The Beowolf is considered amongst the weakest species of Grimm when they're on their own. Any questions before we continue?"

I gulped. I had more questions than I could put to words - some of them about the voice speaking to me and some of them about this thing that stood before me, this thing known as a Beowolf. This thing that had effortlessly destroyed someone was considered weak? There were more?

"Indeed. No one knows for certain how many Grimm there are." I could hear the self-satisfied smirk even if I couldn't see it. "After all, you could not find a world that has survived contact with them."

I froze.

"You're probably wondering why you're standing here."

I was.

"And not with them."

I saw Weiss on the ground, her beauty marred inescapably by something beyond her control. I saw Pyrrha's fear for my wellbeing, for my safety. And I saw Yang, who believed in me, believed in the way my right fist clenched even as my left hung uselessly like an ornament to my heroism.

"Pop quiz," the voice said brightly.

The beast lunged at me. I dove out of the way on instinct and it crashed into the blackboard which had recently been acquainted with my spine.

So much for not ducking. There was a shrill sound in the background - a human voice.

"Don't you see you how terrified they are? They can't even run. Do you think they can fight for themselves?"

Thankfully, the Beowolf didn't turn its attention to the sound.

"Fight for them."

And I could hear the unspoken words. That she wanted me to fight for her as well - to do what she asked. Maybe it was my imagination but I thought she was pleased at this realization, because she continued to give me instruction.

"When a Beowolf fails to overwhelm his little human opponent with his physical strength, he resorts to a base kind of trickery."

I stared at the Beowulf, willing its physical presence to show me what sort of trickery it could be capable of.

"They move really fast."

It slammed into me and while I wasn't quite sent flying by the blow, it was still enough to force me back and I crumpled to the ground. I rolled out of the way of those bone protrusions on the beast's knees and it sank into the wooden floor like a needle into a patient's arm.

"The only way for a novice to survive such an underhanded tactic would be to predict the trajectory of the coming attack by observing its muscle groups."

The Beowolf's hind legs rippled and tensed and I felt a flash of fear. It would pounce soon. But I wasn't scared any more. Knowing what I fought for gave me the power to continue on, even though I was about to feel more pain than I had ever before.

"Guard your neck, my intrepid student."

I threw my good arm in front of my face, much like Weiss had - but with more surety. To my surprise, I could see the Beowolf move now but without her voice to guide me, I still could not have overcome the lethargy in my reactions.

There was a sickening squelch and a stab of sheer agony in my dislocated shoulder.

But I hadn't moved a step.

"Well answered," the voice purred.

And now, there was an irresistible bubble of elation rising from my center - because the sound hadn't come from my tired and broken body.

The Beowolf had been flung away and now it lay on its haunches several steps from me, panting. It howled again, an eerie sound, but unmistakably one of pain.

"Upon taking enough physical punishment, you will begin to observe that a Grimm's mask can crack."

Already, I could see the beginnings of fault lines forming on the stained white bone - little tears in the fabric of its existence.

"Smart boy. But you can't afford to be too proud of what you've done. A wounded Beowolf is just as dangerous as a healthy one, albeit in slightly different ways."

I approached it cautiously and it snapped at me. Its fangs snatched at where my throat had been too close but it pulled back rather than going on the offensive.

Despite dodging first, I flinched anyway but even as I reacted, it moved suddenly and I had to turn quickly to dodge a bone aimed at my midsection. Instead of skewering me, the Beowolf clipped my wounded arm and the sensation brought little white stars to the back of my eyelids as I squeezed them shut in pain.

"That's why you should always endeavor to defeat a Grimm as quickly as possible."

I advanced on the Beowolf again and smashed my fist into its mask. It careened backwards, punch-drunk.

"You won't find any success attacking its mask. That's not where the Grimm can be fought. You need to understand what the Grimm are. In order to exist, it must take the weaknesses of man as much as it preys on them."

I didn't understand.

"Just like you, the Grimm have bodies, even if they lack souls."

And then I did.

The Beowolf swiped at me with its claws but this time I was ready. I ducked under the wild swing and slammed my working elbow into its gut, dropping it to the ground.

I swallowed heavily as I looked down at it. There were little chips and cracks all over that evil mask now. But still, I positioned my foot over the creature's neck. It looked up at me and all I could think was that it looked pitiful. I could almost confuse the hate shining in its eyes for something that touched at my sympathy.

"Those who feel pity for the Grimm will find themselves easy targets. You don't want to be just another number, do you? What will Yang say when little Ruby asks her what happened to Jaune?"

I closed my eyes and bit my lower lip so hard I drew blood, then brought my weight down onto its neck.

I had expected something gruesome to await me, but as I applied pressure, the Beowolf's mask broke into a million pieces with the powdered consistency of ash.

The beast had taken Cardin's life. It vanished into into dark, gray smoke. With it, the Mist which had covered everything like a portent of the impending apocalypse vanished as well.

With my good hand, I gripped my useless shoulder firmly, ignoring the desperate spikes of pain which should have rendered me insensate and pushed against it as surely as I'd ended the Beowolf. There was another pop as my shoulder set back into place and I screamed, long and loud.

I looked up at my 10 am Tuesday-Friday Chem 102 lecture as they stared at me in awe and fear, then back down at the light dusting on the ground which were the only remains of the Beowolf. My lips moved on their own.

"See me after class."

I collapsed onto the ground and knew nothing.

 **~Fictional~**

I woke up with a terrible taste in my mouth.

It smelled like cookies.

"You threw up."

Of course I did.

The face of one Yang Xiao-Long swam into view.

"Did I miss the chem exam?"

I noticed that she had acquired a brittle smile.

"Do you have brain damage?"

I started to nod. "It's quite severe. I think I'm about to die."

"Thank god," Yang said, sounding relieved. "I thought you were possessed!"

"Don't be silly. The first thing someone would do if they possessed Jaune was remove his acid reflux," said someone with the vocal register of a chipmunk.

Ruby Rose was Yang's half-sister and her roommate here at Beacon. Usually, freshmen weren't given a choice of who they lived with for the first year, to promote diversity or something like that like.

Ruby, however, was the living, breathing, cookie-chomping definition of an exception.

She was lying back on her bed, wearing one of her faux-gothic red dresses with too many frills and a pair of thick black compression tights. The TV over the opposite wall to her bed played an obscure mecha anime with nasally foreign voice actors without a hint of subtitles. She was playing Counterstrike on her laptop, which was laid open at an acute angle on her chest. Her arms made awkward shapes as she attempted to use a sniper rifle with her touchpad and play a blitz chess game on her Scroll at the same time.

To top off the image, she was using her face to maneuver mint-chocolate chip cookies from a party-sized pack into her open mouth.

"Call me Olofmeister, boys," she crowed. As the crumbs sprayed faster than the machine-pistol she'd looted from some poor schmuck's body the last round, I came to the realization that I regretted buying the cookies for her.

I didn't bother to ask her who Olofmeister was. Those sorts of questions never turned out well.

Ruby noticed that I was staring and gestured up at the TV. "I'm learning Japanese," she said. The hand flew back onto the touchpad and she roasted someone with a Molotov cocktail.

"Uh-huh," I said.

"Omae wa shinderu," she muttered at the screen, burning a terrorist to death as he frantically tried to plant the bomb.

Ruby Rose was sixteen years old and probably had evolutionary markers switched on in her genetic code that would signal the next step for mankind. Her goal in life was to design the fastest formula one car ever. She was doing a double-major in physical chemistry and mechanical engineering. She was so smart that Weiss Schnee found time in her day to talk to her.

In short, Ruby was somehow more normal and well-adjusted than she should have been.

"Why are you learning Japanese?" I asked, completely prepared for a ridiculous story that would end in her insisting that she had to "test her capacity."

"I met with a representative from Honda motors during the job fair last week and he said that being bilingual would have a large impact on the success of any appli- Boom! Headshot!"

Ruby was always proactive about the important things.

"Oops." Ruby looked down at her Scroll. "I just blundered a knight. Perpetual check it is." She sighed. Then her face brightened. "Never mind, the other guy ran out of time," she said, a tad smugly.

Yang punched my bad arm lightly. "Get back on topic, Ruby!"

"What the hell, Yang? That hurt!" I screwed up my face in a dramatic imitation of shock and betrayal.

"Felt like it."

I rolled my eyes at her.

Yang crinkled her nose due to her proximity to me then dug through a closet for a red solo cup. "Go wash up," she decided. "You have no idea how lucky you are. If you'd had anything other than coffee this morning, I wouldn't have carried you back here."

It all came back to me in a rush. My eyes widened and I sprang up and out of Yang's bed.

"The-"

"Relax," Yang said. "No one else in our class got hurt," she said. Her eyes were downcast and she'd acquired my habit of biting my lip.

"Cardin?" I asked, barely believing it.

"Dead," she said, not meeting my eyes. She pulled a t-shirt out of a drawer. "Someone left this here. It's been washed," she said, handing it to me. "We'll talk about it after you've cleaned up."

I accepted the shirt mutely and stood up. There was still a dull ache in my left shoulder but I seemed to be in an acceptable condition. I slid the bathroom door shut and clicked the lock into place with a long sigh.

When I emerged, Ruby had shut off her anime and closed the lid of her laptop. She tossed a stress ball up and down through the air as she nibbled at her cookies almost daintily. Yang was seated at her desk, tapping listlessly at her Scroll.

I pulled myself onto Yang's bed and slid over the covers until I hit the wall with a soft thunk. I caught the faint scent of sweat and alcohol, but it was too comfortable to complain about.

"I'm angry," Ruby said suddenly. She didn't look it. She was still chewing, thankfully with her mouth closed this time.

I frowned, unsure of what to say.

She swallowed. "I had so many plans."

"Didn't we all?" Yang asked, with a touch of sardonic remorse. "I thought this was going to be the best four years of-"

Ruby shook her head emphatically. "No, no." She waved a cookie at Yang. "Obviously we all had plans for our lives and stuff," she said. "I mean for the end of the world."

We both stared at her blankly.

She put down her cookie, a sure indication that she was about to go on a rant. "I had everything planned out. From nuclear winter to alien invasions to zombie attacks," she said, pouting. Ruby paused, gathering her thoughts.

"I guess this is kinda like a zombie apocalypse," she decided. Ruby bounced off of her bed and began to pace. "We need to find a Hummer to hijack and loot a bunch of gas stations on the way down to Florida. We'll raid a gunshop in the Carolinas or Georgia. We should head to a large beach city, either Orlando or Miami, and then commandeer a cruise ship and set sail for-"

"We are not stealing a car," Yang said, rightfully alarmed. I'd known Ruby for long enough to see that she was entirely serious.

Ruby shrugged. "Well, we have Jaune now, and three people aren't going to fit on a motorcycle. If we have a pickup truck, we won't need to sleep out in the open or break into a shady motel. Bad things always happen at motels during zomb-"

"This isn't a zombie apocalypse!" Yang screamed. This was new. Yang was rarely ever exasperated and never at her sister.

"Oh," Ruby said softly. She stopped pacing and sat back down onto her bed, stricken.

"I'm sorry I shouted," Yang amended quickly.

Ruby shook her head. "No, it's fine. You're right, I was getting carried away." She got like this sometimes, usually when she lost at a game or had to email a professor about late work. She turned a pair of stormy gray eyes at me, with the demeanor of a kicked puppy. "We should probably tell Jaune what's going on. He's been out cold for a while."

Yang nodded, relieved that Ruby hadn't shut down and pulled on her headset with the intent of loudly castigating teammates for poor gameplay for the rest of the night.

"Long story short," Yang (a huge fan of short stories) started, "Apocalypse. Now. Except not like the movie."

I figured that was the case. No one said anything for a moment. Yang looked at me expectantly.

"What?" I asked, feeling a little self-conscious.

Yang smiled reassuringly, a practiced habit. "Nothing, just thought you'd react more strongly to it."

I nodded uncomfortably. "Well, I mean. It's not like a cold demon mist appeared in our chem exam and I punched out a creature that was half-man and half-wolf that ripped my roommate's throat out and tore Weiss's face in half!" I ended with a shrill shout. I fought the urge to burst into tears.

"Well," Yang considered. "Yeah. That."

Ruby looked at me with stars in her eyes. "You solved the puzzle?" she asked, excitement brimming in her squeal. "They're weak to martial arts?" Her hands came up into a stance that would have made Mr. Miyagi proud. She initiated mortal combat with invisible ninjas that had used our conversation as a distraction to sneak into Yang's room.

"Hi-yah!" she shouted. "Wha-cha!"

I cast a flat stare at her.

She gave me a sheepish grin and lowered her pair of karate-choppers. "Sorry." Despite herself, Yang cracked a smile that made it feel like everything was going to be alright.

"They call them the Grimm," Yang said. In retrospect, those were the most unsettling words that could have possibly come out of her mouth.

"The Grimm?" I queried, unable to believe that the word was a coincidence.

"The monster things," Yang said. "They're everywhere."

I looked out the window instinctively.

She turned on the TV. Normally at this time on Friday night, Channel Four played a trashy drama about absurdly rich housewives from the middle of Bumfuck, Kansas, but it had been replaced by official text in large, blocky white font on a black screen under the seal of the Department of Homeland Security.

If you saw mist on the ground, you were advised to evacuate the area immediately.

If you were to see any of the unidentified animal species, you were advised to find an enclosed room.

In case of emergency, you were advised to call either 911, 311 or 411.

Some part of me who was still Jaune Arc, normal college student, wondered how much overtime the people on the hotlines were being paid.

"All the channels are like this," Yang said, flipping through them on the remote. True to the word, the same message was displayed on every single station broadcasting.

She turned her attention back to her scroll. "People are uploading a ton of videos on the different species of Grimm," she said. "There's some pretty nasty looking ones and they get pretty big." She turned it towards to me to show me a grainy image of something elephant-like that towered over a bunch of trees.

"What do we do?"

Yang shrugged and I could see a hint of something devious make its way to her violet eyes. "Well, classes are probably cancelled until this mess gets sorted out. So really, anything we feel like doing."

I treated her to the same stare that I usually reserved for Ruby when the girl was being ridiculous.

A wide smile returned. "We're drinking."

And there it was. Proof that not even the apocalypse could stop a handful of college students from heading out to the bar on a Friday night.

On cue, there was a knock.

Yang jumped off of the bed and made a beeline to the door, which she threw open. On the other side was a platinum blonde girl in a bolero jacket with a raw red line running down her face.

Weiss Schnee sauntered into the room with a bottle of top-shelf vodka in each hand, as bold as sin, without a bag to hide her obvious underage drinking in sight.

Somehow, I didn't think the RAs would care.


	3. Chapter 3

Beta'd by: Mishie, Apoc, OllieK.

Chapter 3

"Go fish," Weiss snarled, throwing down her hand in disgust. A delicate shade of pink had risen to her cheeks, the only sign that she'd been drinking at all. Her pale white fingers ghosted over the neck of one of the bottles. She snatched it up and carefully filled a shot glass (courtesy of the one and only Yang Xiao-Long, who would definitely keep that sort of thing in her dorm room).

Yang's room was, like every room in the freshman dorm, spacious and inviting. The majority of the floor was carpeted and large windows looked out over the university proper. Beacon was well designed in that way - students walked downhill to get to class and uphill to get back to their dorms.

There was a haphazard symmetry that divide the room between Ruby and Yang. The sisters preferred to do schoolwork facing away from one another. Ruby's desk had a shameless stack of cookie packages of all kinds. Yang's had a printer and next to it, rested one of Weiss's bottles, which looked at home next to the cups full of pens and pencils.

Both bottles had been opened at some point even though we weren't a third of the way through either of them. Yang got a little sloppy like that when she was drunk.

Weiss threw back the shot with a vengeance and coughed lightly. Ruby, who was unfairly skilled at games of all kinds, smirked at her from the bed, where she lay on her side, bending and snapping the cards between her finger. Weiss rolled her eyes helplessly.

It was nearly ten pm and we'd been engaged in a Friday afternoon favorite - doing nothing. We ate microwave dinners and slurped at cup ramen. Weiss perused a docket of news sites and Ruby searched the internet for conspiracy theories. Yang and I were pulled back and forth between the two. I read the tidbits with a vague dread in the pit of my stomach despite my attempts to stay optimistic, while Yang tried her best not to repeat a single pun. Neither of us were particularly successful.

Together, we watched videos on the internet of people banding together to fight the Grimm. Some of them were grainy little animated gifs and some of them were campy, shoddily edited music videos with quotes about the human condition prefacing them.

Weiss knew the words to all of the songs.

Inevitably, the tasteless parody videos arrived. I loved them and so did Yang. It made it seem like everything was going to be fine, even as I remembered that voice that hadn't led me astray yet - the voice that told me the Grimm were infinite.

And we drank.

It had almost become ritualistic by this point. Yang would pretend to be unsure about letting Ruby play drinking games with us and I would pointedly ask her what she'd been doing when she was sixteen. As usual, Yang relented gracefully - with a fresh story about the 'crazier' years of her life.

Because Ruby won nearly all the games, it fell on her to enforce the actual consumption of alcohol. Well, only I really needed any encouragement. Ruby became more and more lax as the hours passed - out of foresight rather than mercy. I hated to admit it, but my nickname was rooted in some sort of greater truth. What my digestive tract demanded was law and I had a history of trouble with the law.

I stared at Weiss who, on the other hand, was a model citizen. She'd come out behind in every category which wasn't entirely a game of chance to the younger girl. Weiss worked her way through maybe three-quarters of the liquor consumed so far without looking any worse for wear.

Weiss found a particularly pleasant direction to sway in.

Okay, maybe she was a little drunk.

Yang had elected to stop playing a while ago. Instead, she was guzzling spiced rum straight from the bottle she'd stashed under her bed for emergencies. She'd come up with an excuse to recolonize the bed, summarily relegating me to her rolling computer chair. Weiss was perched on a huge red bean bag with her knees tucked under her. Her back stayed straight even though she was navigating the soft seat like a naval officer in a storm.

I kicked at the ground.

"Stop spinning, Jaune, you're making me dizzy," moaned Ruby.

"Jaune!" Yang barked.

It was too late for me. I shouldn't have ever chosen the rolly chair. If I stopped now, I'd probably throw up. But if I didn't, everyone else would throw up. I slowed to a halt and waited for the beginnings of nausea to creep up on me.

"Oh god, why?" I muttered towards the heavens as a spike of dizziness cut at me. My eyes found the poster of the Backstreet Boys that Yang had somehow stuck to the ceiling.

Yang's eyes flew up to the poster and then back to me. She smiled like a Cheshire cat. "Looks like," she paused, collecting her thoughts, then losing all semblance of volume control. "You didn't want it that way," she finished triumphantly.

I hated Yang Xiao-Long.

Weiss turned to look at the completely unapologetic Yang in mute horror but I knew the worst was yet to come.

"Looks like drinking," Yang said, her smirk widening even further, "Ain't nothing but a mis-"

Ruby pushed herself up and shrieked in disbelief and anger without forming a coherent word.

Yang looked between my anger, Ruby's exasperation and Weiss's horror, completely satisfied.

"That was so bad, I think I need to throw up," Ruby said.

She turned green. "Actually. I know I need to throw up," she said. Ruby covered her mouth and made a dead run for the bathroom.

Yang's eyes widened comedically. "I didn't think it was bad enough to-"

I pointed at the bathroom door, my eyes glinting dangerously. She followed Ruby into the bathroom wordlessly. The door creaked shut, leaving me alone with Weiss. We looked at each other, with some amusement.

Weiss was an interesting girl. My family was firmly upper middle class and I'd known people who had money back at home. But Weiss was something else entirely. She was wealthy in the way that changed the world.

Schnee Corporation had been one of those businesses that had started as an arms manufacturer, with an appropriately sullied name in the history books - if anyone cared. They produced bullets and bullet casings for the Third Reich. When Germany lost the Second World War, the company had been lucky enough to find themselves west of the Berlin Wall.

Nowadays, there was barely a first world country that the corporation didn't sell oil or natural gas in. They floated towards the top of Fortune 500 without fail, year after year. Reading that magazine was how I learned, long before I'd even seen Weiss, that a known quirk of the company was the ludicrous controlling interest that the Schnee family itself still held.

One day, this interest would be passed onto the slightly wasted International Business major in front of me, who was lounging on Ruby's bean bag and picking her way through a Lunchable.

The surreality of who the girl was served only to make the silence more awkward.

"I don't think we've ever been properly introduced," Weiss said at last. She smiled. It looked like something that a politician would practice in a mirror before a photoshoot.

"I'm Jaune Arc," I said, extending my hand to her. She made a motion to stand, but, being the gentleman I was, I rolled over to her. She took my hand lightly but her handshake was firm. The smile stayed cold.

"Weiss." There was the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. "Weiss Schnee," she corrected after a pregnant pause. The words took on a similar timbre to 'Intel Computing', 'Dow Jones' or 'Miracle of Modern German Engineering'. She brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face.

"I met you on the first week," I said. I regretted my words immediately.

Weiss dissected me with her gaze and then there was a flash of recognition. "You!" Her left hand flew to her mouth. "You were that boy serenading people outside of the bar with a guitar," she accused. The hand dropped to her side, limply.

My breathing hitched just a notch. "Uh, yeah," I admitted. "I was- It wasn't…" I struggled. "It wasn't my finest moment."

I thought back on the night and found a shred of defensiveness. "My guitar playing was alright," I protested.

She tilted her head at me, her eyes narrowing. "You were leaning against a fire hydrant, vomiting all over the street and telling people to call you Don Juan."

And so I had. The mortification came thick and fast and unrelenting. I could feel the flush on my cheeks getting worse and worse until something broke.

I chuckled.

Weiss smiled widely, flashing a set of pearly white teeth and giggled softly as she poured herself another drink.

It hit ten pm. On the dot, CNN came on, replacing the notice from the Department of Homeland Security on the large flatscreen TV screen with the evening news, bringing us crashing back to reality. There was only one story, after all.

I heard the sound of Ruby (or maybe Yang) retching in the bathroom.

My thoughts wandered to the more serious side of things. "My parents didn't pick up earlier," I said, tuning out the broadcast.

Weiss shrugged, unsure as to how to comfort me. Yang would have probably told me not to worry - that one of those larger Grimm we saw in the videos probably took out some landlines.

"Did yours?"

Weiss didn't answer me. Her eyes were glued onto the screen but her hands, clutching a shot of vodka, had acquired a shakiness.

"I don't speak to them often," she ground out. If I hadn't been drunk, I would have known better than to press her on the issue. I didn't know better.

"Why not?"

Weiss turned away from the TV to give me a look that plainly asked 'who the fuck do you think you are?', but she answered me anyway. "It's pointless."

She threw down the shot.

"My father…" she trailed off. Anger splotched at her cheeks. "He didn't even come to my album release."

I'd forgotten that little bit of trivia about her. Weiss Schnee had been famous for more than just her family. She'd sold lots and lots of music. I hoped she never discovered that I'd pirated my copy of On the Wall.

"I specifically asked the label to drop it during one of his vacations."

She pushed herself to her feet and strode over to Yang's desk and placed the empty shot glass down forcefully.

"It was a bad album anyway," she muttered.

Not according to Rolling Stone.

"But that's not the point," she said, gritting her teeth as she stomped back over to the beanbag and dropped her weight onto it with a thump. "It's not like he's given me a call."

"And your mother?"

"Dead," she said shortly, forgetting her tirade. "It's alright," she said brusquely, in the manner of all prepared statements. "It's only fair of you to assume. You couldn't have possibly known."

Why did I ever open my mouth?

"It wasn't my place to ask," I said, trying to apologize.

Weiss ignored me, turning her attention back to the television.

There was the sound of more vomiting before the bathroom door flew open with a bang.

"Nothing to see here, officer," Yang slurred, dragging out Ruby by the hand. "Carry on!"

She led Ruby out of the bathroom and picked her up by the waist and dumped the younger girl into her bed like a sack of potatoes. She let out a heavy breath.

"It's ten!" Yang announced.

Weiss pulled her jacket out from under Ruby, who rolled onto her side in acquiescence.

"Off to the bar, then!" Yang shouted.

I winced.

"I want to go too," Ruby protested, muffled by her pillow. She burped into it.

Yang shook her head. "You're way too drunk right now. And as your older sister-"

"Come on, there's no harm in it," I said. "Just make sure she doesn't have anything but beer."

Ruby turned over to look at Yang hopefully but Yang was resolute. "You need to stay in bed right now, Ruby Rose. Try to sleep. If you can't, play some Counterstrike or something."

Ruby furrowed her brow. "I barely ever get to go out," she whined, sounding her age. "They haven't even checked IDs since November. Just our Beacon University card!"

"You can have the rest of my rum," Yang decided, cutting her off before Ruby could rant. "Don't get too crazy."

With that, she locked arms with me and Weiss and dragged us out of her room, closing the door behind her.

Yang's dorm room was on the first floor of the building, thankfully. If she'd needed to climb up a flight of stairs every time she came back at night, she'd probably have a broken neck by this point.

We were hit by a blast of chilled air as we made our way outside.

"Why didn't you let Ruby come with us?" I wondered. I'd been a little too overwhelmed with the rigors of putting my jacket on to protest more on her behalf even if I disagreed with Yang's judgment on the situation.

But instead of waving away my concerns and telling me the same thing she'd told Ruby - the responsible thing, Yang chose not to answer.

She let go of us and stalked ahead, glaring at the pavement.

"It's the end of the world, Yang," I said, keeping pace with her in a half-run. "She deserves to have some fun before the bars close for good."

Yang continued to ignore me. When we passed a copse of bushes, she gave one a hearty wallop, sending chunks of ice everywhere.

"Yang?"

Weiss caught up with us, hanging back. Yang was in a strange mood. She was rarely ever this standoffish, especially with me.

Yang stomped onto the concrete. Her winter boots made satisfying thunks.

"She shouldn't even be here," Yang said at last, slowing her pace down.

Wisely, Weiss didn't say a word. She must have realized that her presence itself was intruding on a private moment. Sure, she was friends with Yang, but it was plain from all those chemistry classes that Yang spent messing with me that this was something for my ears only.

"Why not?"

Yang lapsed back into silence. I began to count the patches of ice on the ground that we passed, waiting.

"It's just…" Yang hummed to herself, thinking. "I love my sister," she said, like it was a given constant in a math problem.

"Of course." I didn't doubt it in the slightest. Sometimes it felt like there was never a time when Yang didn't think of Ruby.

We were passing the campus quad now. It was mostly deserted but ahead of us and behind us I could see little groups making their way towards the bars. The sight of the clock tower seemed to trigger something in her.

"When I went off to college, I chose this place because I wanted the Beacon Experience. You know, the shitty catchphrases Dean Ozpin put on the brochure that read like they should be written in Comic Sans."

I nodded. Weiss did as well, out of the corner of my eye.

"They gave me less money than Dartmouth and I'm basically the UCLA stereotype, right?" she smiled, confident and sure. "But Beacon alums are all so glamorous. Because of this." She swept her arms around, referencing the world that surrounded us.

There was a reason why we attracted the interesting ones - the ones who already had achievements. While Yang and I were in the sure majority, the fact of the matter was that the concentration of people like Weiss and Ruby were much higher than average. I wasn't sure if my nearly stellar grades would have made the cut had my high school not fudged them by overweighing honors courses.

"When I applied, I thought I was going to show up here and have the first-year roommate from hell, like everyone else. I was going to party like…"

She chortled.

"Like the world was ending."

I understood.

"But the only way Dad was going to let Ruby go off to Uni was with me. And surprise, Ruby's got a full scholarship!" There was no jealousy in her voice but that only serve to dull the distinct touch of bitterness a little.

"Hey," I said, in my most reassuring voice, throwing my arm around her as we walked past the quad and onwards to the gates. "Look at it like this," I said, smiling. "If she didn't come here with you, then this whole thing would be a lot worse."

It seemed that I just couldn't find the right things to say tonight. Yang huffed loudly. "Don't you think I know that?"

I grimaced.

"That's what makes this so fucked up to begin with! I love my sister," she repeated for emphasis. "This is the best possible way this whole thing could have turned out, given what's happened."

I sighed and thought that it would be best if I didn't say anything.

"Why am I such a shitty older sister?" Yang asked either me, herself or god.

"You're not." Weiss.

Yang turned to her, blushing in anger and embarrassment, only just remembering that I wasn't the only person walking with her.

Weiss wasn't done. "If Ruby didn't come to college with you, you wouldn't have carried Jaune back to your dorm," she said. "No offense." She gave me a once over. "You would have spent the whole time calling her, asking where she was. Making sure she was okay." There was a hard edge to her voice.

Yang shrugged. "Who knows."

"I wish my older sister were like you," Weiss said so quietly that I couldn't be sure that I hadn't imagined it.

We didn't speak anymore and the bad mood quickly evaporated as we drew closer to the bar. A bunch of upperclassmen that Yang knew crowded around us and began asking us inane questions about whether or not we were enjoying our time here, carefully avoiding the topic of the Grimm.

 **~Fictional~**

Ruby was right.

There wasn't even a bouncer out in front to check whether or not we were actually University students at the Mother Goose that night.

The Mother Goose was accustomed to doing good business on Fridays. It ran on a very specific business model that involved a cover charge to ensure that people weren't just using the bar as a space to socialize. Normally, by this point at night, the tables and chairs over the dance floor would be cleared out and an up-and-coming local DJ would play. He took requests grudgingly.

Tonight, however, the bar was packed beyond belief and the DJ was nowhere to be seen. The news played up overhead instead of a football game and, for once, everyone in sight was drinking. Every part-time worker had been called in to serve the patrons.

Despite the better service and brighter lighting, there was something aggressive and angry in the atmosphere which Yang picked up on instantly.

"What's going on?" I asked. I'd never seen the bar like this before.

She drew me close. "Lots of people died today," she explained by way of whisper.

I could see one of Cardin's friends in a corner with a pile of empty beer bottles on the small rounded table where he sat alone. Russell, that was his name. He was pointedly staring at his drink and held it in a death grip. The bartender was thoughtful enough to have the beers delivered straight to him. I figured that Russell had been here for a while tonight. He handed a wad of bills to one of the workers.

Yang, who was the most used to the currents and directions of a bar crowd dragged me and Weiss along by the hand and somehow navigated up into a suddenly empty barstool in less than a minute. The distance could be counted in tens of people.

Sometimes it really paid to party with Yang Xiao-Long.

"Junior!" she cried out, using what I'd call her flirty voice. It was a little higher pitched and grabbed the attention of everyone around us. "I've got a hero over here who needs a grown-up drink!"

Yang was always patronizing enough to make everyone smile without offending anyone.

The man paid her personal attention. "A hero?" he asked, sizing me up with dark eyes. "What'd he do?"

Yang leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice just enough so that the large, middle-aged man had to lean in as well. "He fought a Grimm who broke into our chem exam. By himself."

Junior nodded appreciatively, his eyes still on me. I could tell that he was humoring her for show.

"And he beat the shit out of it," she said, her smile widening.

"One on the house then," Junior said, his gaze lingering on Yang's midriff. "The usual for you?"

Yang nodded and pointed at Weiss, who smile mechanically but prettily.

The drinks came and went. Unlike a normal day at the bar with Yang, very few people actually approached us. Junior had, by popular demand, turned up the volume on the news and it captured the attention of everyone who wasn't drowning out their sorrows.

With its usual lack of tact, CNN was now approaching the segment in which they discussed death tolls. They used large holographic screens that the anchor showed only passing familiarity with.

A large map of the United States appeared on the screen with garish font running across the top which proclaimed DISASTERWATCH.

I was surprised there weren't any exclamation points.

The anchor explained the unfailingly obvious color key which determined the number of deaths in each region. Shaded dark red were the cities - where the most people had died. Yellow and green colored the more rural areas, usually correlated to population density. The general location of Vale was yellow.

It looked like they had reused a map that last described the severity of a winter storm.

To my eternal pride, mostly everyone in the bar was a decent human being - staring at the screen with a sort of fixed disgust, not only at the events but at their presentation.

"Can't watch this anymore," Yang shouted over the din. Her arm snaked out and found Weiss. "Gotta use the bathroom. Keep my seat warm, Jaune," she ordered.

It was nearly twelve - the time in the night when the amount of people leaving and entering the bar was nearly at equilibrium.

"Hey Jaune," said a voice I would have had a much easier time recognizing if I weren't so deep into my cups.

"Pyrrha," I muttered. A shock of deep red hair hit me in the face as I turned around.

Of course, she noticed. "Oh, sorry!" she cried out. "How are you feeling?"

She was nursing a beer and looked like a girl out of a story. A glossy nail scratched behind an ear.

"Wish I had some cereal right now," I muttered, saying the first thing that came to mind.

The perpetual smile on her face eased a little. "Are you hungry?"

I shook my head, realizing it was an invitation to leave with her. "Nah, ate a bunch before I showed up." I pulled my missing companion's drinks closer. "We've been here for a while, just drinking a little and watching the news. I'm playing watchdog," I joked, pointing at the drinks.

The smile slipped a little. Pyrrha watched with me. Thankfully the anchors moved onwards from the death tolls and started talking about where the Grimm could have come from.

"They don't have any answers," Pyrrha said, gulping at her beer. "Just that they come from somewhere and the mist shows up before they do and it gets really, really cold."

She'd been in the chemistry classroom with me.

"Look at them, they're trying so hard to give us some kind of scientific explanation for all of this that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory," she said. It wasn't mocking - Pyrrha wasn't ever like that. Her matter-of-fact tone, however, made it all the worse.

The word rang in my head again. Infinite. Were we as the human race truly resourceful enough to survive even this? I searched deep for some kind of humanism and thought of the people I'd met at Beacon.

Pyrrha.

I turned to her but she was gone. In her place stood Weiss Schnee, who nearly sprawled onto me. I found that I liked the feeling.

"Where did Yang go?" I wondered.

Weiss pointed in the other girl's general direction. Yang was talking to a bunch of people I didn't know, as she was wont to do.

"She doesn't see it," Weiss said.

"Pardon?" I looked back at her. I'd hit a plateau in my drunken state that I was comfortable with. It was highly functioning and I was unlikely to vomit. A pleasant buzz encircled my senses and motion was eminently confusing.

Weiss, who'd drank maybe three times as much as I had, was far beyond that point. Her ponytail was more disheveled than I'd ever seen it and her little golden crucifix swung back and forth like a pendulum suspended by her long, white neck. Her eyes darted to and fro, over everything and nothing.

"It's everywhere," she said. "It's been everywhere."

"W-weiss?"

"Don't you see it?" she asked, with a deadly whisper. "Falling through the air like ash, covering everything, as though it weren't part of everything already?"

Haughty, arrogant and knowing. That was Weiss, here. A secret that she could only share with a boy who fought monsters.

I looked around and tried to be that boy. I shook my head. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

She looked crestfallen. "I thought maybe you would be able to see it too."

She leaned closer to me, clutching onto the sleeve of my jacket like a lifeline. Maybe it was the trick of the light, but her eyes appeared mismatched. The iris on her right was a light powder blue but the other, the one that the scar she'd acquired in the morning had bisected cleanly without truly harming her, was a shade deeper and almost electric under the barlights.

"Why do you figure?" I asked, desperate.

"Because you have an angel following you," she said.

Oh.


	4. Chapter 4

Under the harsh fluorescence, the soft lava lamps and the intrusive glow of the evening news, Weiss looked better than ever. Her long, platinum blonde hair was tied up in an artfully messy ponytail that hung off to the side, held together by what looked like an actual tiara. Weiss was every inch a princess, even when she was drunk off her ass.

I was old enough to know that I couldn't have ever conceivably loved her in my life to this point. I barely knew her. But at the moment, I was crazy enough to believe that I did anyway.

The words tumbled out of my mouth. "You can see it?"

I felt this strange sense of vulnerability like I was about to be the butt of some joke. It could have been something that Yang cooked up. She had made a passing comment about how I seemed to be possessed when I woke up earlier and had a long memory for stuff that was "just a prank, bro." This would fall under the sort of thing that Yang did often and they had ample time to plan something that would unintentionally hurt a lot. Why did girls have to go to the bathroom together?

Weiss looked around, suddenly self-conscious. Junior was leaning over the bar, listening to some dude tell him a story with a host of questionable hand gestures. Most people were more somber and, now that the bar had quieted just a little, I noticed how many people were glaring at their bottles.

She nodded, a palpable sort of relief flooding into her features. I felt better - not just because I knew she wasn't fucking with me, but because she felt better too.

Weiss Schnee brought out an ugly, selfish side of me. It was the side that wanted to marry the rich girl and do nothing with my life. The side that wanted validation from my peers for accomplishments that weren't worth much in the long run. But tonight, it was also the side that wanted some kind of proof that I wasn't crazy.

But this disease infected more than just me. It had spread to her - all those looks in class that I gave her to feed her ego. The little, boneheaded questions that gave her space to monologue about her past and her struggles with family. And tonight, she wanted the same proof of sanity.

I slid into a pleasant fantasy about how we were perfect for each other. It was a terrible idea that made me smile so hard it hurt.

"What does it look like?" I asked, begging her to tell me the truth.

Weiss frowned, perplexed. Her words became a stream of thoughts. "Like nothing and everything. Like the ashes in the air around us but given form. Between that and who we are. Between everything and us." Her slim, white fingers found her crucifix. "God help me."

I didn't understand. I couldn't. I saw no ashes, I saw no angel. I hadn't heard the voice again. Weiss was making less sense than people I'd spoken to at shows who were on acid trips.

The crucifix dug into her fingertips, leaving little red lines. "It's a she." She paused. "I think. She's hazy. I can't really see her, I just know she's there. And when I look for her, I can feel a little of what she feels."

Weiss took a deep breath and clutched at the cross even harder. "Every time I see her, I hope she's smiling at me." She smiled in the way she wanted to see from the angel to demonstrate. It was open and honest and pretty but there was a hint of self-doubt in her mismatched eyes.

The gold glinted as she let go of it and it bounced against the nape of her neck. "We're poor, miserable apes, Jaune. But God loves us," Weiss said.

We sat in silence until Yang swooped in, saving my immortal soul from my thoughts with easy confidence.

"We're going home," she sang out. Uh-oh. Yang had her responsible face on. "We've all had ones too many. Plural."

The bar had begun to empty out. It was a little different than normal but we were living in strange times after all. I was hit with a shred of responsibility that made my stomach turn. What if the Grimm came back tomorrow or even tonight? I was suddenly glad that I hadn't drunk as much as I'd wanted to.

I nodded at Yang, who'd snaked an arm around Weiss's shoulder and was now whispering a joke to her. The hand attached to the arm which pinned the other girl against her gestured wildly and Weiss laughed.

There was something sad and angry in the air that I didn't want to put a name to. I was glad that at least Yang was having a good time.

 **~Fictional~**

I arched my back in a long stretch as I emerged from the bathroom. My arms came back down really quickly. Belatedly, I had hoped I remembered to zip up. I looked downwards surreptitiously until I found myself back to where Yang and Weiss were now rocking back and forth on the bar, singing something I didn't recognize.

I slammed my hands onto Yang's shoulders, showering her with droplets of water. "I feel like a new man!"

"Gross," Yang trailed off, flipping her hair back. "What took you so long?"

I pointed at the line in front of the men's room.

"Fair enough," she muttered. Her head found the surface of the bar for half a second before she abruptly stood up. Weiss shrieked in surprise.

Weiss stood too and immediately found Yang to lean on. Her face was flushed red now. Her eyes dropped shut. I pointed at her and tried to find words of alarm but ended up exchanging glances with Yang. Thankfully she seemed to know what I meant.

"Maybe I should give sleeping beauty 'ere a kiss to wake her up," Yang slurred.

Not quite what I meant.

Weiss jerked upwards. "I'm fine!" she squeaked, carefully maintaining a bit of distance from Yang.

Yang wasn't deterred. She closed the gap between them in a second. "Of course you're fine in the arms of Sir Yang Xiao-Long," she said, deepening her voice comically.

"You're making me very uncomfortable," I said, mostly for Weiss's sake. I turned to the other girl, who struggled against Yang's grip to no avail. "Yang gets a little crazy when she doesn't have someone to go back with."

"Hey!" Yang shouted at me, offended. I purposefully strode towards the door, both to corral Yang and Weiss out of the bar and to see if I could walk in a straight line. I was a little more successful than Weiss but somehow less so than Yang, who was very good at pretending she was sober.

I pulled the door of the bar open and was hit by a blast of cold air. The streets were still a little iced over. There was no sign of mist anywhere.

It was thankfully easy to guide Weiss along the brightly lit streets of Vale. The concrete was newly paved. Though Beacon itself was on a hill, Vale was a relatively flat city.

"Are you feeling better, Yang?" I asked, somewhat quietly, as we stumbled towards Beacon's campus.

She nodded, counting the stars in the sky. "You were right," she decided.

"About?"

Yang shrugged helplessly. "Bringing Ruby out. She deserved to have a night like this."

"There will be more nights like this," I promised. It sounded hollow, despite my state of mind.

Yang shook her head. "Junior says he'll be closing up the bar soon and driving south. He's got family in Virginia," she said. "I don't think I'll ever see him again. I don't know who he is, what his life was like, anything other than the fact that he's good at listening to ranting when you're drunk," she said, her words coming out in a flurry. "But it still makes me sad to say that."

We reached a side gate after a few moments and I raised my wallet to the scanner. It beeped once. The little red led turned green and the lock buzzed.

Yang pulled it open.

"Weiss?"

There was no response but she walked through the gate with us dutifully.

"Weiss?" Yang repeated. Weiss shook her head into Yang's arm. Her face made a ruffling noise against Yang's parka. "Where do you live, Weiss?" Yang asked, shaking the girl.

Beacon's freshman dorms were spread out over the northern side of the campus and named after the seasons.

"Autumn," Weiss finally replied. "Autumn 204." She gave up any pretense of alertness and slumped against Yang again.

"I'll come with," I started, thinking of cold mist, but Yang shook her head.

"I know it can be dangerous out here," Yang conceded. "But you're wasted, Jaune," she said. "You look like you're about to hurl. Just go back and text me in the morning. We'll make breakfast or something."

I nodded gratefully. Autumn was next to Yang's dorm and on the other side of the green from where I lived.

"Good night," I said to them as I drew myself up and walked towards my building.

 **~Fictional~**

Spring Hall was deserted when I returned. There were no students standing outside smoking and I could only count two lighted rooms from the courtyard. Unlike the brave souls who were so certain of their invincibility or too naive to stop themselves, most people had not gone out to drink.

Mostly everyone was gone from the campus, on their way home by plane, train or car. Those who weren't probably pretended there was nothing wrong with the world and hid away in their dormitories, playing games like Ruby. An eastern european kid who lived on Yang's floor who'd spotted me a calculator during one of Professor Port's exams last semester had been studying in her floor lounge when we'd left for the bar. He was probably still there now.

It was a strange sight. I was used to the liveliness of Friday nights at Beacon, when the future of the world would leave their ambitions behind and, to quote Yang, get down. Beacon's campus was legendary for how much of a good time it was. Despite complaints from the board of trustees and even from some parents, Dean Ozpin refused to enact any disciplinary measures for students caught with alcohol. There was even one weekend in October in which Cardin had gone streaking across campus - after the Dean himself had chased the boy down in a golf cart, Cardin was driven back to the dorm wearing a tarp, without a punishment.

I imagined that it got silent like this over the summer but it felt wholly unnatural and contributed to the sense of fear building at the tip of my consciousness. I let the thick glass doors slam behind me for emphasis just to disturb the silence. It echoed.

The fluorescent tubes which lit the hallways were a bright yellow and white, but seemed a little colder than usual. There was no body heat - no crazy bitches breaking bottles and obnoxious frat bros whipping each other with towels. I could hear the slight thumps of my feet indenting the blue-gray carpeted floor as I walked along and read the names of the residents along my hall. They'd been written on postcards from all over the world and taped to the doors by our RA.

I stood in front of my own door for a moment.

London, Jaune Arc. Shanghai, Cardin Winchester.

I stared at the postcards and let the emptiness overtake me. I pulled out my phone with the sudden urge to check the snapchat he'd sent me in the morning.

It was the profile of a hooker dressed as a playboy bunny. The caption read "she calls herself Velvet". A hand belonging to my late roommate tugged at one of the ears on the costume. After a few seconds, the snapchat disappeared. I dropped the phone back into my jeans pocket and put my hand on the doorknob. The world seemed a little less real.

The key slipped into the lock with a click. As the door opened inwards, I felt myself lean back slightly as though I'd been hit by something I couldn't see. It smelled of cinnamon and sex.

Cardin used to live in this room.

I walked forward and the door closed behind me. I groped at the wall.

"You wouldn't turn on the light if you knew what was good for you."

I jumped. My back hit the door with a metallic thwack. "Who's there?" I asked, my hands flying to my pocket, ready to call the police, to text Yang, to do something. But in an instant, I stopped. A cold sobriety worked its way through my drunken haze.

It was the voice.

I let my hand fall to my side easily and leaned against the wall next to the door. The question came to me easily. "Who are you?"

A soft laugh, sensual.

The moon shone through the window, blindingly bright. It left blind-shaped shadows on the ground between the two beds on the opposite side of the room. There were a handful of batteries and an xbox controller on the ground, as well as one of my hoodies. A half-used roll of paper towels stuck out from underneath my bed, on top of a box of cookies i'd meant to give to Ruby sometime this weekend.

"I don't have a name here. I'm not allowed. Names have power, after all."

The voice came from Cardin's bed, an improper angle to be lit by the direct glow of the moon.

"Not allowed?" I closed my eyes, willing them to adjust to the darkness.

"You may demand it," said the voice. It was silky, with a deep, cultured timbre. This was the voice of someone who spent their time in museums and listened to live chamber music.

"Why wouldn't you be allowed to have a name?" I asked, a little dogmatically. The woman had invaded my room, had taken Cardin's bed and was now spouting some kind of gibberish that made sense to me in ways that weren't logical.

The laugh again. It sent a chill through my spine but it was a pleasant feeling and not a fearful one.

"In many ways, I'm closer to the Grimm than I am to you, Jaune." My name slid over her tongue with a tender affection. I decided this was what it felt like to have an older lover or an extramarital affair.

My eyes finally found purchase in the shapes of the dark room and traced her silhouette perched on Cardin's bed. She was sprawled forward, her wrist tucked under her shoulders, which hugged the dead man's sheets. She'd been reading in a way that reminded me of how a lioness might hold court. I roamed over the exaggerated curve of her back and her long, slightly bent legs. A thigh rested against the far wall and her feet traced lazy patterns against the headboard. She'd been reading Cardin's chemistry textbook.

"After all, I'm just fictional."

My throat was dry. I swallowed, hard, but I couldn't clear the lump that pinched at my trachea.

"But every moment, I'm becoming more real," she said. She sounded like victory and last hurrahs.

"What are you?" I whispered. The shape of her body was too perfect, her voice too enchanting. She'd been in my locked room and she'd spoken to me during my chemistry exam. She'd known what the Grimm were before the news reports, before anyone had chosen to call them Grimm. She'd said those strange, strange words that I recalled every inflected syllable of that seemed to make everything around me more than it was.

As my eyes got more and more used to the darkness, I could see a pair of beautiful, wide amber eyes crinkle into a smile.

"I'm a visitor."

A little bit of resentment bled into my voice, amplified by the alcohol coursing through my veins merrily. "Can you stop being so cryptic?" I half-shouted in irritation. I pushed my palm against the wall. "Where are you from? If you don't have a name, what do people call you? And," I stopped. My voice became something smaller. "Why is this happening to me?"

The smile fled her face. She slowly slid her legs over the side of the bed and dragged one over the other. Her back straightened slowly. She was wearing a loosely buttoned vest with tails over an undershirt that exposed her midriff. A pair of white shorts that Yang would have found risque hugged her hips over a pair of glossy black stockings. A pair of high heeled boots had been discarded neatly at the foot of Cardin's bed. Around her neck was a thick, black silk scarf.

Her hands fiddled with a large, black bow that sat on her head. It looked like a nervous habit. In the dim light, I saw a deep little cut on her cheek which welled up with blood. I recoiled in fear or arousal.

"I'm not from here," she finally said. She drew an errant hand to gesture at Beacon, at everything. She sounded disappointed to admit it. I could only come to a single conclusion.

Impossible things had happened today but that was on another level. "Another world?" I asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of my voice. "Are you a Faerie from the Nevernever? Are you here to make me a Death God?" I sighed, running out of steam as quickly as I'd built it out. A profound tiredness settled over me. "What did they call you back home?" I wondered, humoring her.

The disappointment disappeared from her face, replaced by a savage triumph.

"A good question," she purred. "I don't know what my parents named me, but everyone who mattered to me called me Blake. Blake Belladonna."

The question left my lips before I could stop myself. "Were you a porn star?"

Instead of taking offense, she laughed. It was unlike her other laughs - this was something more deep and throaty. "You're the same, no matter where I go," she decided.

My face burned in humiliation. I was wholly incapable of controlling my motor mouth after even a sip of liquor, it seemed. Then her words registered with me.

"What do you mean by that? Have we met?" I couldn't control the confusion that had overtaken me and thus fell victim to a potent headache. I turned to sarcasm like an old friend. "Were there lots of other Jaunes in the multiverse?"

She looked a little angry now - maybe because I wasn't taking her seriously or maybe because I was glaring at her, blaming her for my headache. "When the last of mankind sputters out like a candle, the Grimm move on," Blake said imperiously, by way of explanation.

I didn't understand it and she knew that, so she continued after a deep breath.

"When they move on, so do I."

The implications of what she said were so serious and upsetting that I believed her for a moment. Weiss's words came back to me. "Are you an angel?"

The movement of her shoulders did wonderful, voluptuous things to her body. "I don't know. I haven't met anyone else like me," Blake confessed.

"But you've met me, or people like me," I finished for her. Amongst my admittedly small group of friends, Ruby was the only one who could lay claim to any deep knowledge of particle physics but I was truly beginning to consider that Blake could be a dimensional traveler of some sort.

"Many times." She didn't seem happy about it or particularly mournful.

My mind ran in wild circles. "If you've met so many of me and so little of you, do you think you somehow killed all your parallel counterparts?" I wondered, excited about the possibilities.

The troubled look on her face reminded me once again that I had nothing in the way of tact.

Blake picked at her nails with a thumb and shook her head slowly. "I don't think so," she said, looking a little lost and very lonely. "I'm forced to conclude that either the Grimm only go places where I don't exist." Her words hung in the air with a dubious question. "Or that maybe I simply never existed in the first place."

I couldn't convince her that she existed because I wasn't entirely sure that I wasn't just crazy, so I said the only thing I could think of.

"Cogito, ergo sum," I whispered to her, like a prayer. I'd taken Philosophy 101 last semester. Somehow, Descartes sounded like a platitude with my atrocious American accent and my heavy doubts.

She shrugged again and smiled at me, looking thankful that I tried, at least.

"But why me?" I asked, desperate both to know and to move away from the strain of existentialism that had cropped up in our conversation.

"It felt right this time," Blake said. "Someone has to save Weiss, after all."

I smiled in a faraway manner that Weiss would never know about. "She's too pretty to die."

The smirk that bloomed on her face infuriated me.

"I'm sure you're about to tell me that there's no world where I'm actually in a relationship with Weiss Schnee."

The smirk widened.

"But you'd be factually wrong," I shouted. "There has to be an infinite amount of worlds where that fact is actually true-"

I deflated, sighing. I picked myself up off the wall and stomped over to my bed, which I laid back into, propping up a bunch of pillows so I could stare at her while I rested.

There was nothing I could think of to stall the inevitable elephant in the room. "So why are you here?"

Blake smiled. Her lips were glossy and her teeth were sharp. "Why, I'm your new roommate, Jaune."


	5. Chapter 5

Talking to a girl as beautiful as Blake Belladonna was kind of like driving in a lightning storm with the top down. Every moment was dangerous and exhilarating and it was so hard to pay attention to the specifics of her words even as it was easy to understand what she was trying to say to me.

"You're here to stay?" I tried to keep the sliver of hope out of my voice as I tried not to think about the curvature of her chest and the way the bow that sat on her head twitched when she raised her eyebrows.

She knew it too. Blake claimed to be something between a personal angel and a tired traveler checking in at Hotel Earth. In her journey, she must have met many boys who wanted to impress her. Some of them might even have been me.

How ridiculous.

I wish I were more like Yang. She would have played it cool and gotten into her pants in an instant. The thought distracted me for a couple of seconds, buzzing around my thoughts like a bumblebee.

"I am," she confirmed, stretching. "These beds are pretty comfortable. Beacon seems to have some high standards," Blake said, like that was some kind of inside joke.

"I guess we do," I replied, strangely defensive.

"Of course, it's not like they'd just let anyone in here."

I wasn't sure what she'd expected my response to be but it clearly wasn't polite confusion.

She flashed me another one of those smiles that I'd already come to associate with her. I was sure that wasn't how Weiss thought she'd look.

There was somewhat of an edge to the smile. It wasn't the smile of a sadist nor a pained grimace, but the smile of someone who knew that you might be into that sort of thing. What that sort of thing was is better left to the imagination.

My continued lack of response seemed to sap the fun out of it because she sighed, putting Cardin's chemistry textbook down with a strong thump onto his desk. Her grin returned to something cheekier.

"Well, since we've established that I'm here to stay, I think it's better if we get to know each other," she said.

I stared at her numbly.

"We should play some icebreakers!"

Gods above. "Were you an RA in another life?"

Blake sniffed imperiously but the way her teeth flashed in the moonlight told me she found me as funny as I did. I hoped. "Wouldn't that be the best way for new roommates to know each other?"

Luckily for Blake, I had some deep insights into the nature of the social phenomena of icebreakers. "Icebreakers don't exist to get you to know your roommate better." I kicked at my sheets with my shoes still on. "Icebreakers exist to make you hate icebreakers."

"Really."

I was on a roll. "You're supposed to share the hate with the person you're forced to play them with. Learning more about each other along the way is just a happy coincidence."

"How about I ask you questions about yourself and you ask me questions about me?"

"Deal." I tried my patented lopsided grin. It made me look suave and debonair and nothing like a stroke victim, no matter what Ruby says. My eyes narrowed deviously. "That was your first question."

Blake nodded, humoring me. "Ask away then."

I went straight to the point. "What are the Grimm, really?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

I sat up. "Look," I said heavily. "You... you've appeared out of nowhere. You're a voice in my head that gave me some sort of blessing during my midmorning chem lecture."

She nodded. "Observant."

I slammed my hands against the bed, wearing at a spring, which made a loud twang. "Yeah. Observant," I drawled, trying to mock her tone in my anger. "You see where you're sitting right now? That's Cardin's bed. Get out."

Something had finally broken in me. I was angry. I was sad. And I was going to make sure that Blake and her stupid face and her stupid bow knew it. I was done playing around.

"You're so cute when you get all demanding," she said in a deadpan. Her bow twitched but she sounded so bored with me. I let out an incoherent growl of anger.

"This isn't cute!" I shouted. "This isn't funny. Cardin's dead." I swallowed my choked sob.

"Boo-hoo."

I ignored her, even though all I wanted to do was to pounce across the room and throttle her. "Ever since your little pet Beowolf," I spat, my fists clenching, "nearly cut Weiss in half, her eyes have been mismatched and she sounds like she's on fucking mushrooms."

"What?"

Blake's face twisted from a cold, hard-hearted teasing to genuine interest.

"Does she not go crazy really often in your Real Life Simulator, Beacon University Edition?" I twisted my head to the side and threw her something between a pained smirk and a grimace.

It was her turn to ignore my commentary. "What does she say?"

"Aren't we playing twenty fucking questions? It's still your turn to answer."

"I don't know." Blake's voice became something wistful, but I was too angry to care.

"What do you mean you don't know?" I spoke shortly, thumping my fingers against the bedspread in a frenetic rhythm. "How is it possible you know so much about my life?" I breathed in deep. "How is it possible that you know so much about the lives of everyone around me? How is it possible," my voice rose in volume with my anger, "that you have no idea about the things that you're claiming to follow around like a seventies band from one universe to the next?"

I inhaled and exhaled heavily, tired of ranting, tired of being pissed off, tired of this apocalypse thing.

"If I knew, it'd be over, right?" She sounded lonely. "I would have won at least once." Blake crossed her legs and seemed to sink into herself. I hadn't known her for long but it seemed she had become a different person. She was upset and I hated it when girls were upset.

I felt bad too. I cast my eyes downward, refusing to look at her. My anger had crushed some kind of tension in the air that I had taken for granted, something enticing, leaving a phantom sense of pain. In my discomfort, I played with my hands, picked at my fingernails and shuffled my feet, wishing I'd not lost my temper.

"They don't eat."

I looked up sharply. She was running a thumb along her nails as well, unconsciously mirroring my actions.

"They don't sleep. They don't feel, love, think, fear." Her eyes met mine. "They wait."

"They wait?" There was a quaver in my voice. It felt cold again, like we weren't supposed to be talking about this.

"They wait for a chance to be our end. They are the end, probably." Her eyes held mine.

The nail of my index finger dug deep into my thumb.

"I told you earlier, didn't I? They're infinite. They're unstoppable. They're proof." The grimace returned to her face, a sort of Stepford smile that looked practiced. Ugly.

"Proof that it's all over for you. And that it's all over for me. And maybe," she chuckled to match that smile and an itching, cold sweat ran down my back. "Maybe we never had a chance to begin with."

"What can we do, then?" I grit my teeth.

"Nothing."

"No." I refused to believe that.

"No?" She looked almost angry at me. "Are you going to go on some epic quest to find the source of all Grimm?" She sneered. "You just have to follow the yellow brick road, Jaune."

I didn't say anything. What could I say to that?

"Surprise, Dorothy. You were in Kansas all along." The smile returned but it was a little more bright, a little more empty, a little more faraway.

I bit my lip. I had so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to comfort her. I wanted her to comfort me. I wanted to know if she was really just a voice in my head.

"Have I answered your question to some degree of satisfaction?" She was a little less friendly now. Or maybe I just understood her better.

I nodded.

"So." Blake's eyes narrowed. "Tell me about Weiss."

"She's a Schnee. She's an heiress, an amazing recording artist, a-"

Blake sighed. "No. I know who Weiss Schnee is. Tell me what she's seeing right now." Blake pursed her lips. "Not who she's seeing. What she's-"

"I'm not an idiot. I know what you mean." My face turned the shade of a tomato. "I was just trying to give you some context about her."

"Right. Some context." Blake smirked, nodding along.

"She said it was like everything and nothing. Like ashes in the air." I struggled to remember her exact words. "She said it was between everything and us." I shrugged helplessly.

"Like ashes in the air?" Blake took a look around like she expected to see it too now.

Something like a giggle or a purr grew out of her center. She laughed and laughed in a way that made me worry for her.

"Ashes to ashes." Her eyebrows waggled, she covered her mouth and she let herself fall onto Cardin's bed. Thick locks of black hair pooled about her like a halo. "Of course it'd be Weiss. Weiss Schnee."

Abruptly, she stopped, sitting up. "I haven't seen it in a very long time. I was starting to believe that it was another one of those things that didn't really exist. Things like me."

"Seen what?" I was officially troubled. I still wasn't sure that Blake wasn't a voice in my head, but I was pretty sure that she was crazy.

What does that say about me?

"Dust." Her voice became almost reverent. "It's pretty hard to explain what it is. Weiss probably knows more about it than I do already. She was always..." Blake trailed off. "She was always talented at that sort of thing."

"What does it do?"

"Everything."

I cast a flat stare at her. "Really?"

Blake tilted her head to a side. "No. I'm not trying to be cryptic. It really does do everything. It's an energy source. It reacts to the soul of mankind. It's everything the Grimm are not." She seemed to be reciting a passage from a textbook.

"Didn't you just say that the Grimm couldn't be stopped?"

Blake's eyes rolled upwards. "You're inferring a lot about Dust that I haven't said. The Grimm aren't afraid of Dust, just like how they're not afraid of you."

"What use is it then?" I couldn't keep the despondence out of my voice.

Blake smiled. "It's up to your imagination."

I hated Blake Belladonna with a passion that stretched into a stunned silence. My eyes started to wander again, even though I tried to keep her face firmly pinned in my gaze.

My phone rang, breaking the silence into a million little pieces. I pulled it from out of my pocket.

"What a quaint Scroll," Blake said, staring at it. I glared at her and, on impulse, threw my phone at her.

She caught it easily and glanced at it.

"It's from Yang."

I paled. Looks like she wasn't part of my imagination after all. She threw it back at me, nailing me in the stomach with it. My knees clasped together, catching it before it could drop to the ground.

I considered turning the phone off and getting a good night's sleep with the hope that I was just delirious.

"You should really answer that," she said with that decadent drawl. "I think Ruby might be in some trouble."

My blood turned to ice. The phone was at my ear before I realized it.

"Cute." I gave her the middle finger, forgetting my trepidation, and she winked back at me.

"Jaune. Jaunejaunejaunejaunejaune." Yang sounded hysterical. "She's missing."

How could Blake have possibly known?

"Ruby?"

"Ruby's missing, Jaune!" Yang wailed into her Scroll. I held the phone away from my ear a little. "What do I do? I should have had her come along with us, I should-"

"Calm down, Yang," I barked into the receiver, praying to any god that would listen that she would. "I'm coming over."

I hung up quickly and pulled my jacket from off the other end of the bed and slid it on in a run. I threw my door open.

"Don't forget your keys!" Blake called after me. I didn't. They were in my jacket pocket. I checked.

I tore down the corridor like the devil himself was at my heels and down the stairs.

It was so, so cold outside and a hint of mist was beginning to form.

"Fuck!" I screamed into the wind. The mist was already beginning to thicken. It swirled around my feet, luminescent and off-white.

When I reached Yang's dorm, she was already standing outside in her parka, shivering. She stomped at the fog, looking like she wanted to kick it away.

"Ruby's gone missing," she said to me, noticeably more muted, but her hands were shaking and her teeth were chattering. She sat down on a bench and stood up again, several times. "I came back and she wasn't there!"

"Don't worry about it. We'll find her, we'll find her," I promised again and again, hoping that I wasn't lying to her.

"I'm the worst sister." I'd never seen Yang cry before. "This is all my god damned fault. If I'd just taken her out like she wanted me to, this wouldn't have happened."

"You couldn't have known," I tried.

Yang slammed a fist into the park bench. "I should have," Yang snarled. "Ruby's never been one to do something because you told her to. Was I really stupid enough to think that she'd stay put in the dorm and play Counterstrike on a night like this?"

Yang raked her fingers through her hair, a nervous habit. "We took Weiss out," she said. "She's not even our friend, she's Ruby's friend."

"Calm down," I repeated. "Did Ruby take anything with her?"

Yang shook her head. "I don't know. Her Scroll's still on her bed."

On cue, a large rose petal caught my eye, floating downwind.

I heard a cheerful Blake Belladonna in my ear. "Follow the yellow brick road."

What. The. Fuck.

Blake snorted delicately, proud of herself. "You know. Ruby Rose," she finished. I stewed in impotent anger. Blake brought out the worst side of me, full stop.

I turned to Yang, trying to pretend Blake hadn't said anything to me. "I have an idea," I said to Yang. I broke into a run from the direction where the rose petal had come from. It was in the direction of the quad.

"You think she might have been headed towards the bar?" Yang dashed after me, her panic replaced by determination.

I nodded, not trusting myself to blurt out everything at once if I opened my mouth. I had already decided that I'd tell Yang about the voice in my head but now didn't seem like the best time to do so.

The mist thickened at our feet as my sneakers crunched through the layers of slippery frost on the grass.

In the distance, amongst a copse of trees covered in that beautiful hoarfrost I had learned to hate in the span of a dark day, was a figure dressed in red and black. Ruby. Ruby Rose. She stood tall despite her stature, unmoving.

Covering her head were her pair of designer headphones, blasting her pop-punk so loudly that I could hear a slice of drums and electric guitars from hundreds of feet away in the dead of night. In one hand was an open bottle - the rum that Yang had foisted off onto her.

Circling her were a trio of Beowolves. They dwarfed her in size, lounging in a limp, deceptively relaxed stance.

Yang's face turned white. She bit back a scream as she took shaky steps forwards.

Before I could move or think or shout out at Ruby to run, one of the Beowolves lunged at her.

I couldn't handle this. Cardin had been a mainstay of my life at Beacon and, occasionally, someone I enjoyed talking to. Ruby Rose was more than that. Ruby was a friend - a better friend to me than anyone I'd met before Beacon.

I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed for Yang, for someone to hold onto. I stood vigil for Cardin's end, but I didn't want to see this.

But instead of the scream I expected, I heard a soft thump and a howl the distance. I couldn't feel my throat but I heard myself making incomprehensible noises. Yang grabbed at my forearm so hard it hurt.

I forced myself to look.

Ruby was alive, somehow. She had slid out of the way of what must have been a careless lunge. She looked up at us and nodded. I thought I saw a smile. In the distance I could see a splash of red on her dress which dripped down the front.

I thought I could almost hear it. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Ruby didn't understand the sort of danger she was in. Ruby was out of time. There was nothing I could do to reach her. But I had to try.

I ran. I ran faster than I'd ever run in my life. Yang was hot on my heels, willing to forget everything she'd said before, every complaint she'd had about Ruby being here at Beacon with her. Because she was a good sister.

We had to reach her.

Thirty yards.

Ruby was looking down. The fingers of her free hand traced the wound. I could almost feel the wince that must have run through her. Maybe it was like my shoulder. Maybe she couldn't feel it just yet.

I hoped she wasn't in pain. I hoped she wasn't scared. I hoped she didn't have to die too.

The Beowolves jumped at her, as one.

"Nonononono," Yang muttered, crazed in despair. We were still running forward in a suicidal lope.

But Ruby did not fall. She rolled out of the way gracefully as I had. Her lips were moving to the music or so I thought. Maybe she was talking to Blake. Maybe there was hope.

Twenty yards.

The music wafted over to us, sounding like the sick parody videos we'd watched with Weiss earlier. I wasn't sure why I had laughed at them to begin with. This wasn't funny. This really, really was not funny.

Every step sent a jarring pain through my legs and thighs as I sped forward.

Ruby wasn't talking to anyone.

"This will be the day we're waiting for!" Ruby sang at the top of her lungs now.

Ten yards.

She slid out of the way of another lunge, so fast I could only see a blur of red in the distance.

"This will be the day we open up the door!" Ruby continued to sing, twisting out of the way of a claw.

The bottle in her hand surged upwards and came into contact with the mask of one of the Grimm and shattered, raining liquor and glass and blood everywhere. It must have been her blood. It painted her sleeves red.

I could hear the singer from the headphones sitting on her neck now.

"For it is passing that we'll find," Ruby sang. That was not in the song.

Time seemed to slow as I stopped and listened for the words.

"Our immortality tonight," Ruby continued.

My blood ran as cold as the mist.

"What?" Blake hissed my thoughts into my ears, all humor gone. I hear the shock in her voice.

Another Beowolf howled again and I threw myself forward, trailing Yang now, who didn't understand, who couldn't have understood.

Ruby stood her ground this time and drove the broken bottle straight into the Beowolf's chest as it jumped at her. Its mask shattered into fine dust in the darkest hours of morning.

Ruby panted quietly, her breath misting in the moonlight.

And then I was by her side.

I knew better than to give a chance for the other Beowolves to regroup. I threw myself on one of them and drove it to the ground. My hands found its neck as I pinned it and forced all my weight onto it.

There was the satisfying sound of crunching bone or cartilage or whatever the Beowolf was made of and it died in a short whimper, its mask cracking slowly, then quickly.

The other Beowolf had gone for Yang, who'd been right beside me, but Ruby was suddenly next to it, throwing it off kilter and sending it careening to the ground.

She balled her knees up for momentum as she jumped, pointing the bottle directly into its center and landed with a hearty squelch.

The Beowolf screamed. It was an inhuman sound, an anger like nothing I'd ever heard before.

Ruby stood with a delirious giggle as she swayed, drunk off the liquor and off of battle over to me.

"And that," she said, with a flourish, "is what happens when Little Red fights back against the Big Bad Wolf."


End file.
